Innkeepers
by rokusan
Summary: CloTi - 'You can't just kiss me like that after what you just said'
1. the Phone Call part I

Disclaimer:  
See author bio of rokusan  


Innkeepers - Book 1; Marriage - Chapter 1; The Phone Call. Part One 

"Oh yes you are! Yes you are! You are a cute widdle doggie-woggie aren't you? Yes, you are! My itty-bitty Sassefrassie!" And so forth. 

Tifa sat up again to face her computer. Sassie's tail wagged cheerfully against the side of Tifa's leg. A smile was on her face. She could be such a sucker when it came to her dog. 

Sassefrass was not an expensively-bred dog. The dog was not a particularly well-behaved dog. However, Sassie was very sweet, rather intelligent, as dogs go, and incredibly cute. 

Tifa had two cats as well, respectively named the Pope and the Godfather, neither of them particularly well-bred or expensive, but again, intelligent and cute. And incredibly arrogant and blasé, as cats go. 

She loved her pets. They were family, in the end. People came and went. But as long as they lived, her animals would stay with her. 

Listen to me, she thought as she finished up her work. Going all ballistic on the beasties. 

Her eyes dropped to her keyboard, where her nail-bitten fingers rested. The beasties were the only ones to go ballistic on. It had been a year since Meteor had been negated, and almost as long since she had seen anyone from the Avalanche team.   
Truth was, everyone was so preoccupied with fixing up their own neighborhood/city/town, that no one really had time to meet or do anything together anymore. The last time Tifa had heard anything from anyone's end, was when Shera had called two weeks ago to invite Tifa to her wedding. 

"He proposed to you?" Tifa exclaimed happily. 

"I know, can you believe it?" Shera laughed. 

"Oh, my God, Shera, I'm so happy for you! Congratulations! How did you get him to actually do it? I mean propose?" 

"Ahem.. well, we had a humongous argument one night-" 

"Gee.. how is _that_ possible? Cid's such a calm, good-tempered guy.." Tifa interrupted, a bit sarcastically. 

"Well, we didn't really ever have arguments in the true meaning of the word, because I've almost never made it a big deal to disagree with him..but now I was just so fed up, I thought, ah, screw it, and I told him he was wrong, just to make him mad." 

"I like it!" Tifa interjected cheerfully. 

"So yeah, he couldn't stand that I actually disagreed with his omnipotent opinion -" 

"What was the argument about?" Tifa asked. 

"Whose turn it was to make dinner. Don't make me go into details." 

"Okay, I won't." Tifa replied, laughing. 

"So yeah. Anyways, he insulted me again at one point and I just snapped. I shouted fuck you, and went to pack my bags, I was so pissed off. Oh, and so was he. But he didn't actually believe that I would go, his cigarette dropped out of his mouth when he saw me with all my clothes packed into three suitcases and a handbag. Yeah, the dear Captain was so flabbergasted at the idea I might ever leave him.. well, he wanted to stop me right then, but I smacked him and marched out of the house." 

"Where did you go?" 

"Oh, just to the Rocket Town Inn, but Cid didn't know that. He phoned my mom, asking if he could talk to me. She cracked up and said even if I had been there, she wouldn't have let him, because she was proud I had finally told him off. Eventually.. whatsisname, that sweet old guy who always used to hang out around the rocket, he told Cid he had seen me at the Inn. Cid actually apologized to me. It was hilarious. And from one thing came the next.. and then, you know.." 

"Uh-huh.." Tifa grinned. 

"Well, at least I had stolen every pack of his cigarettes in the house when I ran out on him.. he hadn't been able to smoke for a while, so it didn't taste bad." 

"Yeah. Hate it when they've smoked or drunk beer. Tastes gross." 

"Yup. One of my first rules was don't smoke if you wanna kiss me. Or get well-acquainted with your chewing gum." 

"Good one. I'll have to remember that." Tifa laughed. 

"Yeah. So what is up with you and the love scene anyways?" Shera inquired, ever less-than-subtle. 

"Well, I've been thinking about joining a convent -" 

"Tifa!" 

"I'm just joking. There is this guy.. dark and handsome…" Tifa continued. 

"Oh, do go on.." 

"Kind of short though, only comes up to my ankles, but then, that _is_ when I'm wearing heels.." 

"Aw, damnit Tifa, you need a boyfriend. Cats don't last for company forever.." 

"I'm fine, Shera, honestly. The last thing my busy life can have added on to it is a guy. Bless his heart if he even would want to be added on to _my_ life." Tifa said, smiling. 

"Well.. okay, you're the one who knows your life best, I guess. But I wanna be the first to hear, understood?" 

"Yes, mom." Tifa said. 

"Okay, hun. you promise if a guy walks in and it feels good, you don't kick him out just cause you don't think he wants to be added onto your life?" 

"Mm. So, what time am I expected at the wedding?" 

"Well, the guests are coming at twelve in the afternoon, but since you're gonna be a bridesmaid -" 

"A bridesmaid?" Tifa squealed. "I get to be one of your bridesmaids!? Oh, Shera, thank you so much! I love you!" 

Shera laughed. "Well, it goes without speaking, dear friend! Yuffie and Marlene will also be in on it. Cid can figure out who he wants as best men and stuff." 

"Oh, I can't wait.." Tifa murmured happily. "It'll be good to see everyone again. I was wondering.. had you been able to keep in touch with anyone, this past year?" 

"Well, Barret and Marlene like to come over regularly, and I saw Yuffie once, but that's it. Cid and I haven't really been in contact with anyone else. I mean, I only just recently got a phone book that has numbers listed, that's how I found you just now. I've gotten some other numbers to dial, tried to locate some others.. I think everyone's been working real hard on getting everything back on track, though. Hey, you know like no one else. How's the Midgar crowd holding up?" 

"People are doing good. Kalm was flooded with refugees, but there were a couple of really good people, and they'd gotten everyone else interested in working, rebuilding. Midgar is still rubble, mostly, but camps have been set up, and there's the one big settlement in a ring around the Midgar site, which has been built mostly with rubble from Midgar. It's still growing, it's already become a real group of towns now. And of course Kalm has grown so fast it's incredible. It used to be just a few streets, a city square.. you know, a village. It's actually becoming a city. They started setting up all these new modern suburban houses around the old downtown, and they haven't stopped yet." 

"Where's the money coming from? Won't that cost millions of Gil?" 

Tifa was silent for a moment. "It has." Then she laughed. "Luckily I had become a multi-Gillionaire during our 'heroic quest' last year. I've invested alot of money into building houses and shops, and it's going well now. Obviously I wasn't the only one investing; a lot of people in this area have money, and everyone's enthusiastic and ready to work to make stuff better." 

"Wow, Tifa." 

"Oh, come on. I know everyone's been doing the same. I'll bet Cloud's been helping so many people around Midgar, quite possibly together with Reeve. Nanaki's working on Cosmo Canyon, Yuffie on Wutai." Tifa smiled to herself, then asked, "What about Vincent?" 

"Well.." Shera said pensively, "I can't be sure, but I've heard rumors of a tall dark handsome stranger dressed in red and black. In Nibelheim. He's been investing as well, I'd say. Nibelheim's doing great." 

Tifa was silent, wondering about how he could have returned to a place that had been so influential to his past, in such a terrible way. Maybe he was purifying the place somehow. Bring on the good karma, Tifa thought. 

"Okay. I trust Vincent, whatever he's doing. What about Barret and Marlene.. what're they doing exactly?" 

"They were traveling a lot, Marlene loves seeing the world. What I understood from Barret is that he helped Corel out of the deep dank hole it was in, and I think he's been by Gongaga. Ooh, the Gold Saucer reopened recently, by the way." 

"Sweet!" Tifa exclaimed. "I'll have to go there as soon as trains, planes and boats start working again." 

"Yeah. I think people are already getting back on track with transportation, though. They've just taken a lot of old ShinRa shit and turned them into little enterprises. You can already take buses going from Rocket Town to Nibelheim or Corel. And of course the Airship is also being used as an international taxi. The crew is still running it. They're brilliant." 

"Oh, I believe it. They were when I last saw them," Tifa commented, feeling a faint twinge of nostalgia and homesickness as they talked about their friends and their past experiences.

"I'm glad we've all been able to make such a difference. How's the inn holding up then? How did you get it in the first place anyway?" 

"Doing good- um, I was lucky to land the spot, the old innkeeper left for Midgar after Meteor and Holy hit, I think he had family there.. anyways, he sold me the inn for a good price, and I've been doing well enough.   
"I found it right after we all split up.. and right away all these people were coming to me to ask for shelter. I recognized so many people from the Midgar slums.. it was really sad. So I had all these families sharing rooms, everything was really cramped. But people went to rebuild around Midgar, and build more onto Kalm. Nearly all the families with me eventually got some income and moved into their own little place. So, I still have a couple of people under my wing. The inn's also a restaurant and a little supermarket inside. It's a lot of fun, and basically incredible how quickly the economy pushed itself back up.." 

"I can imagine. That's so great! It's been booming all across the globe." 

Tifa grinned despite herself. "Things are finally looking up, huh?" 

"They really are, babe - and I'm proud of you. You're doing so well. Everyone seems to be doing good. Haven't you heard from everyone else since we parted ways, though?" 

"Mm.. no. I talked to Yuffie on the phone once, afterwards, but we weren't able to keep in touch.. last I heard she was going to finish school. and then help really rebuild Wutai. The materia we gave her should help, I suppose.." 

"What about Cloud? Have you talked to him since when you left for Kalm?" Shera asked rather suddenly. 

"Haven't spoken to him since we all departed after the end of the whole Meteor issue. Why?" Tifa replied, suddenly feeling a shift inside. 

"Oh, just.. when Cid called him about the wedding, he sounded.. well, Cid said he didn't really sound all too lively anymore. And apparently he asked about you." 

"Oh?" Tifa said. "Why didn't he sound 'lively' anymore?" 

"Don't really know.. I think Cid said Cloud had been getting survivors out of Midgar, but that would have been nearly a year ago. Helping around, sponsoring at the Midgar Ring, maybe.. I guess he's just been bored.." 

"Do you think? I think he still misses Aeris." Tifa said, feeling rather subdued. 

"..it's been over a year since.. I mean, I understand.. but could he really be basing his entire life around a woman who's dead? We all loved Aeris.. but he only knew her for those few months.. that would be, well, I dunno, bizarre, don't you think?" 

"No.. not really, I think people can go on missing loved ones for years after they've left. Just.. it's difficult to go back to living your life when you feel you're betraying whoever it is who died. I think I can imagine." 

"I.." Shera started again. 

"Shera.. what if Cid died? A year later.. wouldn't you still be grieving?" 

"That's different. We've known each other for years. We've lived together for years. I can't imagine ever loving anyone else." 

Tifa was silent for a moment. Talk about having been there and having felt that. "Maybe that's how it was for them." She offered, quietly. 

"Tifa.. I never saw him and Aeris like that. I always thought _you_ and Cloud.." Came Shera's soft voice. 

Tifa's eyebrows pushed together. "Us? Why would we..? I mean, we were friends and all, but.." 

"Oh.. I guess not. Though you guys might make a good couple." 

Tifa laughed. "Yeah, who knows. But I really don't need any romance in my life now, and I don't think he's ever thought of me like that before." 

"Okay, well, I guess I should leave that to you and Cloud, huh? Oh, shit -hun, I'd love to stay on for hours with you, but dinner's burning.." 

"Your turn to cook now?" Tifa teased. 

"Nope. Cid's, that's why it's burning." 

They both laughed and said their farewells. Tifa had hung up the phone with a contented sigh. They would really have to do that more often. And then Tifa sat at her desk and wondered why she felt so alone. 

* 

End 1. 


	2. the Phone Call part II

Chapter Two; Phone Call II 

Tifa rummaged through her papers, her numerous notes and reminders -she never had been tidy when it came to paperwork- and flipped through her organizer countless times before coming to the horrifying conclusion that she really had lost the address of the place where the wedding would be held at. 

"Damned." She muttered under her breath. What had she done with it? 

Brringgg.  
Brringgg.

"Walhalla, good afternoon." Tifa answered the phone in a huff. What had happened to the piece of paper she had written it on..? 

"Tifa?" 

"Yes, that's me. Who's this?" 

"..It's me, Cloud." 

"I'm sorry, who?" Tifa asked absent-mindedly, not really listening as she shuffled papers. The voice sounded an awful lot like- 

"Aw, come on, don't you recognize my voice anymore? It's me!" 

"Cloud!" she exclaimed in disbelief, forgetting the paperwork. 

"Hi!" he laughed. A smile spread across her face. 

"Oh, it's so good to hear from you again! How are you?" she asked. 

"It's good to hear your voice, Tiff -how have you been?" he asked at the same moment. 

"Nuh-uh, you first." 

He laughed again, and he sounded clear and sparkling. He sounded 'right around the corner,' to use an expression Tifa had learned from her mother. "I've been okay.. fundamentally bored and stuff, nothing new. I just.. Shera called the other day and gave me your number, and I wanted to know how you're doing, so I decided to call you. I have nothing interesting or exciting to tell, I warn you -" 

"Who needs interesting or exciting! Tell me how you are, where you are, what you've been doing!" 

"Well, I was around Midgar for a long time, helping out with survivors, and trying to help clear away rubble and stuff.. afterwards I was using my ample supply of Gil " -he laughed at this- "to get people going, get houses built, shops started, stuff like that." 

"You weren't at North-West, were you?" she asked, referring to the north-west quarter of the Midgar Ring. Specifically, the quarter nearest to Kalm. 

"No, I was at Sheer-South. But I've been moving my way around slowly, you know, lending a hand and using my gil everywhere.. I'm at Sheer-North now."   
She nodded, eyes closed, tracing an imaginary line from where she was, North-West, and where he was, at the most northern refugee-site-turned-town, above Midgar. 

"You're kidding.." she murmured. 

"Why? What about you?" 

"I own the inn at Kalm now." 

"No shit. You must have had a lot of people on your hands." 

"Yeah. I've been helping out with people coming from North-West for the past year. I've payed for houses and stuff being built.." 

"That can't have been costing little-" 

"It's well worth it, if you see how many people need a place to stay." 

"Yeah, tell me about it. There's so much to do." 

She felt a smile play on her lips. Cloud sounded the same as ever, and different. "I know the feeling." she said, softer than she had meant to. 

"But Tifa.. you're in Kalm. That means you're two hours away. I had no idea. I asked about you all throughout Midgar." 

"I would have called, but.." Her eyes shifted down to lock on the fingers of her right hand, which were fiddling with the phone cord. 

"Yeah.. I didn't like it too much either, that everyone lost contact, but it got hard, with people wanting to go back to their own parts. And ShinRa's satellites not working anymore meant away with the PHS system." 

"It was too bad. Well, at least these phone lines are up and working again. It's so great to hear your voice, you have no idea.." 

"I'm happy to talk to you again too, Tifa." 

"Oh, before I forget, you wouldn't happen to have the address of Shera and Cid's wedding location, would you?" she asked. "I lost the piece of paper I scribbled it down on.." 

"You're going, too? Duh, you did talk to Shera. Yeah, um, lemme see, I should have the address here somewhere.. how were you planning on getting there, if I may ask?" 

"Ah.. I guess I was gonna hitch a ride with someone going over there, in that general direction, or maybe the Airship, if it's around. Hadn't really arranged anything yet. It was on the outskirts of Rocket Town, wasn't it?" 

"Uh-huh. Here it is -Magdalen's River 17-19, Rocket Town. Do you need the zip or phone number?" 

"No, that's okay. Magdalen's River 17-19. Thanks." 

"Well, if you want, I'm trying to figure out how to get there too.. it's in two weeks right?" 

"No!" she exclaimed, laughing. "In one! Cloud, you would have missed the wedding if it weren't for this conversation!" 

"Just checking to see if you were paying attention." 

"You ass." she laughed. 

"Okay, in a week then. But, if you feel like going up there with me.. interested in getting together?" 

"Yeah, of course! I haven't seen you in ages. And yeah, then we can figure out how to get to the wedding." 

"Cool. Just the old inn, right? Downtown Kalm?" 

"Yep, that's the only one. I've named it Walhalla. Are you doing anything tomorrow? You could just come over whenever you like, it's always really quiet on Sundays. Tomorrow is Sunday, in case you hadn't realized it." she taunted warmly. 

"Oh, hardeeharhar. Yeah, I'll come over around noon. I'll see you Monday then, bye!" he said. She could hear him snigger as he hung up. She caught herself just in time before she shouted out 'Sunday, eejit!'. 

She sat, staring at the phone with a sense of satisfaction inside. The bell at the front desk was chimed for attention, and she put down the note with the address. Let's not lose anything this time. 

The rest of the day, Tifa bustled about, feeling fresh and full of energy. 

* 

Tifa walked into the backroom of the inn, dropping her coat on the chair at the table. With a sigh, she settled herself in front of the computer, pressing the space bar a few times to wake it up from its energy-saving slumber. It rattled sleepily and the screen faded from black to desktop. She worked quickly, familiar with the spread-sheets into which she put in the expenses for the inn, restaurant and shop. 

She caught herself staring blankly at the phone. How wonderful that she could actually call her friends, and they could call her now. She remembered when she had gotten this whole inn-manager thing going; the telephone had just lain there sullenly, plugged into a wall that could only offer it electricity to make the pretty green light on the front glow. And then one day a phone company had hoisted itself up out of ShinRa's ruins- and the phone lines were once again operational. Everyone on the Planet had been assigned a new number though..

Several ShinRa sattelites had been reinstituted for international calls. As of yet though, there were no operators, and no phone books, except for the few that had been issued in Shera's area. So yeah, randomly dial a number and you can bet your breeches that you'll get someone on the line. Don't bet your breeches that you'll know each other, though. Tifa smiled and was vaguely aware of a dinging noise at the counter. Her mouth twitched. Would it be Cloud? 

She looked down at the keyboard for a moment. Careful, there. Don't get excited. As she walked out to the desk, she couldn't help the smile producing itself on her face. It had been so long.  
It wasn't Cloud at the desk. 

A short, plump lady fiddled with the pen lying on the counter.   
"Hello, Malien." Tifa said pleasantly, denying any dissapointment.

The lady looked up, her reddish-brown curls bouncing a little. She had a pretty face, but she looked a little nervous.  
"Hullo, Miss Lockheart." 

"..is something wrong?" 

The woman sighed, not meeting Tifa's eyes. Then her mouth tightened a little.  
"It doesn't feel right asking you this.." 

"Asking me what?" 

"Do you have another vacant room?" the woman blurted, turning red. She met Tifa's eyes. Tifa's mouth opened, but before she had a chance to form her thoughts into words, the woman continued on.  
"My best friend Sail.. she lost her husband in the Meteor Crisis. We just found each other again. I.."

Tifa nodded already; she knew what Malien meant to say. Malien had lost her own husband in the Meteor Crisis, and she had been one of Tifa's first 'guests'.  
"Malien, of course your friend can stay here." Tifa said, already considering what room she'd give her.  
"Does she have children or is she alone?" 

Malien nodded a little. "A daughter, Nimuwe. It would be wonderful if they could stay here until they get back on track. I.. maybe they could even fit into our rooms, Merlan's and mine, for now.." 

Tifa shrugged. Merlan was Malien's teenage son. He and his mother already didn't have alot of space to take up at the inn. It would be even tighter for them. "I don't think it'll be neccessary.. Where are they now?" 

Malien motioned vaguely to the west. "Still at the shelter." 

Tifa's eyebrows tightened involuntarily. "All these months?" she felt a burst of guilt. She had forgotten the shelters even still existed. 

Malien nodded. "Yes. It's been terribly difficult. At least food has been taken well care of for them, I've heard of others who have had problems getting even something to eat.." 

Tifa shook her head, not really knowing what to say. 

"Malien, tell Sail that she and her daughter are more than welcome to stay for as long as they need to. And I could use another set of helping hands to run the shop or restaurant."   
She smiled knowingly at Malien. Malien had felt so guilty about living at Walhalla for free that she had insisted she repay Tifa by working in the shop. Malien smiled gratefully back.   
"I.. Sail and Nimuwe are taking a walk in the park. Merlan has been showing them around." Malien confessed. 

Tifa nodded."Bring them over soon so we can see where they'd fit best." 

Malien thanked her and bustled out of the door. Tifa was already pulling out information on her rooms to see where she should let Sail and Nimuwe stay, when she heard Malien's laughter, and the woman's voice warm as she apologized for bumping into someone. A man's voice replied in amusement. A voice that made Tifa's blood pound in her ears- 

He was here. 

* 

A/N:: Yes, in my story they're all millionaires. Now shut up. 


	3. Retrospect Rewind One Year

  
Chapter Three; Retrospect. Rewind One Year 

The airship landed and everyone filed out, incredulous silence between them. 

It had ended. 

She glanced to Cloud first, of course. He looked exhausted. It could have been because of the twenty-seven hour-period during which he had been awake. It could have been because he had just seen Midgar destroyed. Or perhaps it was because, as he had told her less than an hour earlier, he had seen Aeris. 

And now the brave hero longs desperately for the fair maiden who couldn't be saved, she thought flatly, she herself too tired to be wry, the cynicism giving way to acceptance and despair. And to the feeling, for the first time ever, that she didn't need this. She didn't want to have to feel anymore that she wouldn't ever be good enough, that she'd always be second to Aeris. She didn't want this aching in her chest anymore, which she had each time she saw him. 

Surprised and at a loss as to what to do about this feeling towards Cloud, she remained tacid, and when she saw Yuffie brush away at her eyes, went over to hug her. 

The sun had begun to rise, and they were all sitting in a circle, saying something on occasion to each other, none of them posing _the_ question, though. Barret wiped away tears of relief and mumbled unintelligibly into his PHS; Marlene had called him from Kalm. Vincent and Yuffie were speaking softly. Cait Sith seemed to have been switched off. Nanaki was lying still, tail flicking ever so lightly. His one good eye scrutinized each member of the group, again and again. 

Cid stood, pacing occasionally, smoking like a 'damned heretic,' that was how he had described himself to her once. Because heretics gave off a helluva lot of smoke when the church burned them at the stake. The night after Cid told her this, Tifa had dreamt of everyone who had ever opposed ShinRa -including herself- dying, tied to flaming stakes, suffocating in the smoke. 

Cloud sat, silently staring at the center of the circle, as if there were a fire he could stare into. She clenched her jaw. No stakes. No flames please. 

Did everyone still see him as the leader? Were they waiting for whatever he said to do next? Or maybe they were waiting for _anyone_, subconsciously daring each other to say it. 

Well then, she would. Hadn't she always been the optimistic one? 

"I think it's time for everyone to go home," she said. She didn't speak that loudly, but in a second it was silent in the small group. She was very aware of everyone's gaze fixed on her. Cloud's gaze. 

"I think everyone has plans." She smiled at Yuffie and Barret. "And there's plenty to be done across the Planet. Where ever I'm going, I hope I can be productive. I just need to ask Cid if-" 

Cid scowled at her. "Sure, fine, ask the frickin' pilot. Cid'll drop anyone off anywhere they want, 'cause Cid can frickin' fly a frickin' airship-" None of the group looked at him funny -he always talked like this. 

"It's ok, Cid. I'll just walk." Tifa interrupted him this time, not in the mood for his crankiness. 

"Fine! I'll fly you, Tifa. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna be flying back and forth for each one of you. Make up your mind and then get on the airship, all of you." 

Cid turned out to be able to have human emotions, after all. Like Cloud had, in the end. 

"Wait.. Cid, you'll be going back to Rocket Town, then?" Cloud asked. 

"Yup. Back to Rocket Town. Shera'll be having a fit by now. God knows what'll have happened to the house.." he was still muttering to himself as he climbed up the rope ladder. 

Tifa saw Cloud half-smiling at Cid's retreating back. 

"Where's everyone else going, for now?" she asked, cheerfully. She didn't feel it. 

"Wutai." Yuffie said, giving them all a meaningful so-give-me-your-materia glance, and stood up to go inside. 

Vincent rose soon after her. "I'll see where I have Cid drop me off. There are several locations that interest me." And he went up the ladder, following close behind the ninja. 

A decision had settled in Tifa's stomach like tepid beer. 

"Picking up Marlene in Kalm, then we're off to Corel." Barret grunted. Tifa went over to him, and she hugged him. "Send Marlene my love." And then Barret went up as well. 

"I'll be rebuilding in various places," said the Cait Sith doll, and hopped to the ladder, where it pulled itself up with impressive agility. 

"I presume it is obvious where I'm headed," Nanaki said. He clamboured up the ladder. Tifa watch with a worried grimace, but Nanaki was graceful, and speedily reached the top, even while climbing the swaying rope ladder with claws. 

And then it was Cloud and Tifa. She thought she would burst with conflict, even though her mind had been made up. But the look he gave her, though it was friendly and understanding, was not one of love. And she couldn't stand it anymore. If he had been hateful and unkind to everyone, then why would he love her, right? Then it would have been okay. But if he was so wonderful, and so caring, and if certain people meant so much to him.. then why could she not be one of those people? She couldn't smile back at him. She tried and couldn't. 

"What about you, Tifa?" he asked her. More out of politeness than interest, she thought. 

"I'll see. You?" She couldn't meet his eyes, anymore, either. 

"Dunno yet. I might fly around with Cid, get a feel for what state everything is in, then have him drop me off whenever he's done with the others." He turned to the ladder. "You coming?" 

"I'll be there in a moment. Could you tell Cid to come back down? I need to talk." 

For a moment Cloud seemed displeased, then he nodded silently. There was a tightening bolt in her throat as they met eyes and he went up.   
She wondered, masochistically, if perhaps Cloud disliked the idea of her talking with Cid when she could be talking with him. She tried not to stare too openly at Cloud's behind as he climbed up the rope. 

Cid came down. "Why'd you make me climb all the hell back down?" he demanded. Tifa regarded him, then held out her hand. 

"I wanted to thank you for everything, Cid." 

"I haven't done squat to thank me for." he grunted, ignoring her outheld hand. 

"You're taking everyone home. Make sure your trip is safe. And theirs." 

"..what?" 

"Have a safe trip. Maybe we'll see each other again some time." And she withdrew, turned away. 

"Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?" 

She looked back and beamed at him. "It's ok, Cid. I don't need a lift in the airship, I can walk. I need to walk. Say goodbye to them." 

He took her in for a long moment, sucking in deeply from his shag. "..but." 

"Don't let any of the others follow me. I don't feel like keeping the past around me. Send my love to everyone, and remember that it's a small world." 

He looked unhappy. "They're expecting you up there with me. Cloud's gonna kill me if I let you go. You just gonna desert ' em all now?" 

"Desert?" she stopped and turned to face him. "Who am I deserting, Cid? Everyone has a place of their own to return to, and people they love. Shera and Rocket Town." She motioned a hand towards Cid. "Wutai. Lucrecia's cave, though the fool won't admit it. North Corel, Cosmo Canyon, the Midgar Ring.. If anything, wouldn't the people who did have a home, be deserting me, as I don't actually have one to return to?" 

Cid stared at her, looking rather miserable at her reprimand. The cigarette puffed regretfully in his mouth. She felt silly and impatient for having said that to him.   
"Cid.. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, it isn't true. I have Nibelheim to return to, if I wish, and otherwise.. the world is filled with places to see and people to meet. I have plenty of homes waiting.. and waiting to be discovered, no doubt." 

Had he believed her enthusiasm? She didn't want to upset him, or any one of the dear people sitting up in the airship. She watched Cid quietly. He looked at her after a moment, and then nodded his approval. Smart man.   
"..Ok. See you soon, Tifa." and he reached out and shook her hand. 

"Bye, Cid." and she watched him climb back up before she headed out. 

She was only a couple of dozen feet away when the PHS rang. Out of habit, she answered. It was Cloud.  
"Get back on the airship." he said flatly. 

"What?" 

"You heard me. You can't just walk away like that." 

"Why not? It's all over, Cloud. We can start new lives now. Can't you see how wonderful that is?" 

"I.. Tifa, I do. I understand. But.. why are you starting your new life like this? Why without.." he swallowed the rest, and she wished for him to finish the sentence without me. Why not start your new life with me? Heh. As if he were thinking that.

"Cloud.. Midgar's walking distance from down here. I have to go see what I can do. Who knows what can be done to help." 

"Tifa.." 

"Why? Where do you plan on going, Nibelheim?" 

"..No. I'll come and try and find you in Midgar." 

"Cloud-" Apprehension gripped her. No, no, no. She couldn't handle any more of this 'friendship', not with her feelings in the wrong places. "Midgar's a big city, Cloud. Or was. You might not find me that easily." Her voice felt like it was getting softer, and straining more, with each sentence.

"I'll be trying. See you soon, Tifa. Be careful, keep the PHS with you. Everyone here sends love." And he hung up. 

She thought of the tone of his voice. He sounded sad, and annoyed, somehow.   
He'd be trying to find her in Midgar? To what, tell long tales of how it should've been between him and Aeris? To be friends, but never ever anything else, with Tifa Lockheart, in Midgar? She let out a long shuddering sigh, and pointed her boots to Kalm. 

She looked up and acknowledged the incredible, pure deep blue that was filling the place of the violet and peached colored dawn, and so started the first day of the rest of her life. Cloudless. 

* 

A year later Tifa Lockheart's eyes were focused on the man-shaped shadow that crept along the wall like a heartbeat. And somehow she was unable to place herself in the same shoes she had worn a year ago. 

* 

A/N: Ok, to keep from blathering on, as all of you who knew the old version of the Revealing were used to, I've limited myself to using two sentences per A/N –this resulting in my lacking usage of periods –but instead of periods, one can use commas, dollar signs $ and even euro signs € ~ anyhow, my dear onigiri, I wish you all a happy christmas period as well as booze-filled new years' celebrations>> and bid you all forgiveness for rewinding back to old shoes and lollipops, and thus delaying the meeting between my darling Cloud and my dearest Tifa, you know how Roku loves to delay things. Oops, there's the first sentence already, so I had better take leave, baibai! 


	4. the Visitor

Chapter Four; the Visitor 

Cloud looked good. He looked even better than she had remembered him. He was tall and lean and handsome. His hair was still spikey and blond, but seemed to have been cut since she had seen him last. His eyes were blue and lovely, and he was beaming at her. She realized she used to barely ever see him smile, and to see him like this was something new.. but reassuring. 

"Hey there, Ma'am," he said cheerfully to her, one hand behind his back. Grinning, she walked from behind the desk and went up to him, wrapped her arms around his neck tightly and pressed a kiss on his cheek (she had to reach up on tiptoes), and then she said, "It's so good to see you again." 

He returned her hug with one hand on her lower back, and when they stepped away from each other, he produced a gargantuan bouquet of pink flowers from behind his own back. "No way!" she exclaimed happily, "How sweet of you!" 

He shrugged. "I dunno, I thought you might like them," he said, grinning. They both felt shy, and didn't know what to say for a moment, so she nodded and took the flowers from him and asked him if he wanted coffee. When he said yes, please, she brought him to the back, where she let him settle down in her living room while she cut the flowers to fit a vase, and made coffee for the both of them. 

"I baked cake," she told him as she set their coffee down on her low wooden table. 

"Nice! What kind?" 

She motioned to the kitchen rather helplessly. "What's it called. Ah, chocolate. Fudge. Yes."   
He nodded to her, and if he saw her blush he didn't say. He stood up, bent over to fetch the coffee she had just put down for him, and followed her into the kitchen. In the kitchen she laughed and couldn't meet his eyes, conscious of his height again, not to mention his broad shoulders. She wasn't used to being around him any more, after only a year. 

"You were lucky to get your hands on this place," he commented as he looked around. 

"Yeah.. it's great here. A central position in Kalm, so you can tell what's going on in the city, and I'm making enough money to still be supporting a couple of other small projects in the area." she said as she busied herself with chopping the ends off the flowers he had brought along. 

He nodded pensively, and she could feel him watching her as she stretched to reach a glass vase on the top shelf of the cabinet. He reached easily up and retrieved it for her. 

"Thanks, but I could have gotten that," she said, pretending to be miffed, and he was amused. 

"Somehow it's a reassurance to know you're still as short as when I last saw you," he remarked. There was a dead silence and the sudden stillness of air between them, as the parting terms of a year ago flashed through each head. 

_-as when I last saw you-_

At the same time that Tifa asked, "Would you like whipped cream with your chocolate cake",   
Cloud said, "I tried to find you in Midgar, you know. I spent most of last year looking for you." 

She felt earth sink away beneath her, and she felt her heart beating rapidly. She left the whipped cream for what it was.   
"..I didn't know. But I knew. I mean.. I wanted to go there at first, but then I was drawn to Kalm.. I didn't know how I would be able to leave you a message, so I just trusted I'd be able to find you again one day. I mean, phone lines couldn't stay down forever, right?" she argued, cutting into the chocolate cake. She stopped when she realized the pieces were growing savagely smaller with each slice. 

He was looking at her but she couldn't look back. She didn't tell him the entire truth. She didn't say that her choice had been largely based off of him -where Cloud was going, she wouldn't.   
Somehow, standing before him like this, that choice seemed childish and silly, and she regretted it. But she had stepped away for a reason, hadn't she?   
_Not now._

"I'm sorry," she said again, fiddling with the flowers. This time she managed to glance up at him. 

He nodded. "I understand. I was just worried. I didn't know anything about your situation. Maybe something had happened to you, a building collapsed, a gang that got bored.. " 

"Cloud," she smiled, "I'm a martial artist. I survived ShinRa, Jenova and Sephiroth, just like a certain someone.." 

"You're right. It's stupid. I dunno. I'm just glad you've been doing well. _This_ well." 

"Yeah? Well I'm just glad I get to see you again." she said warmly, and gave the flowers a last fluff, before taking them and her plate of chocolate cake and moving ahead of him back to the living room. 

* 

He had been so happy to speak to her again. Of all the members of Avalanche, he had missed her the most. After the defeat of Sephiroth and Meteor, it had seemed almost self-explanatory that he would stay with her, that she would stay with him. He had been so surprised when.. 

Anyways, what was important was that he was here now, in her 'inn-slash-restaurant-slash-shop thing' as she had eloquently described the complex herself. Here where she was. 

The chocolate cake was delicious, of course, and the conversation grew to flow like water. Tifa was very up-to-date on everything that had been going on. And she was Tifa, quick and bright as cleaning detergent- not to mention not nearly as toxic. It was good to be able to talk about a certain project and have her confirm his thoughts, or offer a new opinion. It was good to hear of her feelings and experiences and be able to compare them to his own. It was so good to experience her again. 

Tifa's legs were folded beneath her as she lounged on the couch. Cloud was sitting across from her in the great fluffy lazy chair. In between them, on the coffee table, stood two more cups of coffee.  
"I think it's brilliant. And she deserves it. She's been waiting for that man for so long." Tifa said. 

"Has she really?" he asked, surprised. "I thought she was fine with the platonic nature of their relationship." 

"Are you kidding? Do you think if Cid had only been 'a friend,'"-Tifa hooked her fingers into indignant little air quotations and he had to keep from laughing and getting distracted from the point she was trying to make- "to Shera, she would have stood by him so faithfully and taken so much bull from him? As I gathered from her story, she taught him a well-deserved lesson." 

"Poor Cid." Cloud remarked, something itching in the back of his mind. He let it rest for now, whatever it was. 

"No, it's his own fault for being so mean to her before." 

"I seriously hadn't ever considered she might be in love with him.." 

"No.. but then, you're always oblivious to those kinds of things, aren't you, Cloud?" she taunted. After she had said it, she made a funny sound in her throat and smiled sort of peculiarly at him. 

"Am I always oblivious? I'd like an example, please." he asked, bemused, wondering what she was thinking of. 

"Okay.. um, didn't you ever notice that.. ah, that Yuffie.. had a thing for you?"   
She was holding back laughter, red creeping over her face. 

He gave her a blank look. She had dropped the more serious side of the conversation.   
"No.. can't say that I did," he replied dryly. "But then.. apparently, I _am_ oblivious." 

She grinned. "You are." 

"So sixteen-year-old kleptomaniac Yuffie Kisaragi had a 'thing' for me?" 

"Yuh-huh. Absolutely." 

"Tifa, you are an evil, lying cow." 

"Cow? If I'm a _cow_ then you're a skinny, poisonous, slimy, green treefrog. I actually think she liked Vincent." And her eyes danced as she sipped her coffee innocently. 

"Vincent and Yuffie?" his eyebrows went up. "Isn't that a bit more of an age difference?" 

"Oh.. I don't know, everyone has different preferences." 

"Beside the fact that he could be her grandfather." 

"He still looks quite good for a fifty-or sixty-something-year-old, if you ask me." 

Cloud gave her a look, muttered something about how Vincent could very well be _Tifa's_ grandfather, then took the last bite of his chocolate cake. 

"Well? How was the cake?" she asked, ignoring his mutterings. 

"Tasty." he answered after finishing his mouthful. "But since you're a maitre d' when it comes to anything edible, you must have known that already, so you were just fishing for compliments, weren't you?" he teased. 

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You're mean! That's it. No more cake for you." 

He couldn't help it, he started laughing. She was bringing out his best side, really. Or at least some side. She stood up and curtseyed, grinning at him. 

She took their plates to the kitchen, and he looked lazily around the living room. He felt light, open, released. This past year had changed him a lot, he knew it. He smiled more and laughed more than he used to, because he had learned that people drew strength from him, and smiling had become a way he could give people strength. Tifa certainly didn't mind smiling. 

She returned, a thoughtful look on her face.   
"Cloud?" 

"Yeah?" 

"How.. how long will you still be working on this project? Helping out with building houses in the North Ring?" 

He shrugged. "Another week, I think. I'm basically there on the committee because I'm a financial benefactor. They're just finishing off on details and then I'll be a free man again, I think." 

She regarded him as she pulled her brown hair back into a sloppy ponytail. He noticed she had cut off quite a bit of it. 

"What's your next one coming up?" she asked. 

"Nothing yet. Why?" he asked back. 

"Well, if you have nothing better to do, you.." she shook her head and rolled her eyes at herself. "Just so you know. You're always welcome here." 

He smiled at her. "Thank you. I'll hold you to that, Tifa Lockheart." 

"Good." 

They stayed in the living room, talking until seven, when Tifa jumped up and exclaimed they really should do something about dinner. She scoffed at his suggestion to go out somewhere. 

"You used to trust my cooking, Strife." 

He sniggered. "Yeah. Before I tasted it."   
He laughed and feigned pain when she punched him. 

* 

A/N; it took a long time to get this chapter where it is now. It also took a really long time for my hair to dry today =B   
Go on, all of you, go and fall in love. You'll eat less chocolate cake that way. I just need to find the right boy.

Have any of you seen the movie Ichi the Killer? I like the blonde one with the piercings.. *sniggers* 


	5. Dinnertime!

Chapter Five; Dinnertime! 

The following Wednesday, what with Cloud coming over to Tifa's place again to hang out/have dinner with her (yes, again), it rained. Horribly. She opened the door to a sopping, soaking, absolutely and completely drenched, irrevocably wet Cloud Strife. 

"Hey!" Grinned Cloud Strife, blond hair sticking darkly to his forehead. The relentless torrents outside didn't seem to have bothered him too much. She smiled and handed him a towel. He followed her as she walked into the kitchen. 

"So, how's the weather?"

"Delicious."

"I can tell you thought so. You seem to have wet yourself with glee."

"Harhar."

"Bwhaha."

"Feel like rollerskating? It's great weather for it." he invited, with a casual motion towards the front door. She dropped unceremoniously to the floor. "I would, but I seem to have suddenly broken my leg." 

His hair fuzzed out and stuck gracelessly in all directions as he cast a suspicious glance in her general direction. "Weirdo."

"Ahahah. Don't get me started. Have you had a look at your hair yet?" She asked as she stood up and brushed off her butt.

He cleared his throat. "Why? What's wrong with it?"

"Oh, nothing- Tea?" 

"I'd love some t- Tifa.. how bad is the hair?" 

* 

It was early afternoon when he arrived, and the day being a Wednesday, the Walhalla was a bit busier than during their last meet-up.   
Cloud sat back and regarded as Tifa bustled about back and forth, seeing to the guests and the shop. The restaurant, Ambrosia, wouldn't open until about 5:30, and even then, Tifa didn't need to oversee it neccessarily. She was just the manager and big Kahuna and all that. He smiled to himself. Imagine that girl.. only twenty-one and already running this joint. Everything going smooth as clockwork.. and she just bopped along, going her own rhythm, never needing anyone to catch her. He felt something twist. Perhaps jealousy, perhaps a form of helplessness.   
He couldn't help but beam at her as she ran past, ruffled his hair, and called cheerfully back to him, "I'm off rollerskating, don't wait up!"   
He laughed and yelled after her that he would be going through her accountancy records in the mean time, then, and she shouted back up to him that he couldn't quite be that bored, wouldn't he rather watch the grass grow?

He shook his head and went over to the window. Rain poured down, flattening the panorama into an obscure two-dimensional silhouet of a city. Kalm had become a city. He tried to peer past the rain to recognize some of the old downtown, but it was virtually impossible. His breath made a white mist against the window. He wrote ' PLEH' in it as he always used to, letters mirrored, like he had when he had been small and in school, zoning himself out, away from the teacher's dilapidatingly boring soliloquies and away from the little assholes who always sat behind him, using their ink pens on his too-large white shirts, writing crass words and their names, and what exactly they thought of Cloud. None of them had ever been smart enough to figure out what in the name of Holy the letters 'PLEH' could mean.  
They couldn't understand that 'PLEH', letters mirrored, meant something totally different to someone who saw the window from the outside. Well, perhaps he wasn't giving the Nibel boys enough credit. They had all only been six at the time. Tifa still five-and-some-months.  
He saw her in the reflection on the window, and turned to her, didn't say anything. She didn't either. Comfy silences are special.

She stood beside him and looked out the window, probably having as much difficulty as he had had a moment ago trying to discern the features of a city in the middle of a spring storm.  
He watched her, her eyes squinting, her lower lip being chewed. Her hair had been pulled back into a braid.   
"You going to take a break soon, or do I have to drag you to dinner?" he asked, fastening his eyes on her left shoulder. No reason, except that the particular sweater she was wearing dipped off of that particular shoulder. He ran his tongue along the insides of his teeth and didn't say anything again. 

"No, I'm all done." She replied after a moment, as if she had been daydreaming and had suddenly realized he had been talking to her. He nodded and turned to walk away from the window, but she lifted her arm and rested her finger right beneath the 'PLEH'. 

"So it was you, always calling for help from the windows." she said, and walked off to the kitchen. 

He stared at the glass, at the fading letters in the moist residue of his breath, and felt as if all those long years, he had simply been waiting, and that waiting was now, peacefully, casually, coming to an end, and he followed her into the kitchen. 

* 

Neither of them feeling culinarily interesting or daring-'culinarily? is that even a word? how do you spell it then?' demanded a grinning Cloud when Tifa used it-, they browsed Tifa's cupboards in search of something cookable. Tifa was about to suggest they mosey down to the shop (her shop) and pick up some supplies, but Cloud nearly shrieked like a little girl when he came across the box of ninja-turtle-shaped macaroni & cheese.

"You just nearly shrieked like a little girl, Cloud." 

"I didn't know you could still get these!" He ranted wildly, ignoring her remark. "I haven't seen these since my ninth birthday party in Nibelheim!" 

She laughed and commented with a wink, "That's how old this box is, you know.. it was on your ninth birthday party that I bought this in that little Supermarket right down the street." 

"Now we definitely have to eat it. Man, thirteen-year-old macaroni-and-cheese from our hometown, and in gnarly ninja turtle shapes!"   
She stared at him, appreciative of how subtly sarcastic he was being. Hopefully. 

"Gnarly! Gnarly.. Remember? And.. ah, cowabunga dude!" He grinned at her. "So, what else is on the menu?" 

There was a flat sort of silence. 

'Wasn't 'cowabunga' from the Simpsons?' she ventured. 

He stared at her. 

'Nahh..' 

She shrugged. 

He blinked. 

Her eyebrows went up and then down again. 

'Right. Well.' 

'Right. Never mind.' 

* 

Together they prepared their meal of macaroni & cheese (which, to tell the truth, really wasn't quite as old as it may have at first seemed- leaving out of the picture the question whether or not five-year-old macaroni & cheese is any more edible than thirteen-year-old macaroni & cheese, for indeed, the macaroni & cheese spoken of here is no younger than five) along with slices of cucumber and tomato and the peculiar but obscurely logical choice of deep-frozen fish sticks with garlic mayonnaise. So much for lack of culinary daring. 

It goes without saying that they did, of course, thaw and then fry the deep-frozen fish sticks before eating them. 

Finally seated at the table, staring at the food and then at Cloud, who was staring at the food, Tifa commented, "You know.. if we were anime characters, you'd have the wildest niko-niko eyes right now. Really pointy wiggly niko-niko eyes." 

He gave her a serious look, one that caught her off guard because she hadn't seen him be serious in over a year, and he was still very good at it.   
She stared, and Cloud watched her thoughtfully and nodded to himself, and then replied, "And you.. you'd would be sweatdropping." 

A slightly maniacal look crossed Cloud's face and vanished again. God, he was on a roll tonight. Tifa found herself grinning and groaning at him. 'I'm going to slap you,' she muttered, and didn't. 

"So what would anime-babe Tifa do if anime-hunk Cloud started pairing the ninja turtles macaroni bits off against each other? Take that, Shredder!" and his eyes danced over to meet hers. 

"That's when I would facevault," she said, a pitiful look on her face as she swallowed a bite of (thawed, fried, but previously deep-frozen) fishstick with mayonnaise. 

"Good," he laughed, "because so would I. Like I would ever play with macaroni-and-cheese turtles." 

"Yeah. As if." 

"Yeah." 

"Sure.." 

"You don't believe me, do you? You're not being very supportive, you know." 

"I'm hurt! How can you think I'm not a hundred percent behind you at all times, Cloud -ah, sorry, I meant Raphael.." 

He smiled and looked at his plate. When he looked up he sort of did look serious, but normal, a slight smile on his face. "You have always been a hundred percent behind me," he said pensively, meeting her eyes with a clear look. She didn't know how to respond or what to think, and she furiously fought the flush shooting up her neck to her face. Why would she blush? He was a friend and she liked that he had said that. That he had noticed. 

"Well, anyways," she filled in quickly, afraid of terra incognita, "it's good that I found them once, isn't it? They aren't quite thirteen years old, though, I got the box a few months ago from a packrat making money off of all the food she'd collected over the years.. but it's a good memory to have of growing up. I grew up with macaroni-and-cheese which my parents would buy from that shop. You know? I still remember exactly how it smelled there. Because the owner.. I can't remember his name. He collected herbs, right? But it always smelled strongest of-" 

"Nutmeg." Cloud said. He hesitated, realizing he had interrupted her. "Anyways, that's how I remember it smelling." 

She looked at him curiously. 

"I was about to say nutmeg," she replied, and they smiled at each other. Looking down, she went on. "It's weird.. I actually remember lots of different _smells_ from Nibelheim. The smell of the wood from my piano, the smell of the town's first vehicle with a mako engine.. the smell of the mouldy old wood of the well on townsquare." 

He smiled and nodded, "I remember what Nibelheim smelled like when it rained." He glanced at her, pausing, "and I remember how the Nibel quarry trail smelled like leaves and dirt and rabbit shit in the fall." 

"Aah! The quarry trail! I used to spend so much time there.. I could jump in puddles and climb in trees for hours and hours.. and, I don't know, my mom always said my clothes were so dirty that I had to have rubbed against rocks and bury myself in dead leaves. I can't remember, but I probably did." 

He laughed. "Yeah, well, so did I. I always went and tried to climb up the one really big tree-" 

"The one with the limb split off by lightning?" 

"That one." 

"I loved that tree.." 

"I never could make it to the top.. I couldn't reach that one last branch.." 

She giggled. "I could reach it. I used to be taller than you, remember?" 

"Of course I remember. You used to be taller than every boy in Nibelheim.. luckily you stopped growing when I started." 

"Too bad, really.. I think it would have been an enjoyable sight for all to see if I was, say, six foot eight by now, and you were still about four, four and a half..." 

"Shut up! You know how horribly my ego would have suffered under that? Having your cute little neighbor girl who is a year younger than you be twice your size? I would be a strange, sad little man right now." 

"As if you aren't already," she taunted. 

His eyes narrowed glowingly at her, pretending to be menacing, and she raised an eyebrow and changed the subject. 

"Hey, you're a better cook than I expected." Tifa remarked, and poured more wine for the both of them. 

He dropped the I-am-glaring-menacingly-at-you act and retorted, "now what am I supposed to say to that? Thank you for having had such low expectations that they could only go higher?" 

"That's mean! I've never had low expectations of you!" She exclaimed, then paused. "Well, I mean, except for the time you had to sort of save the entire Planet, I wasn't too sure about that.. not to mention the time you had to dress up as a chick and gather your skirts running to save me, or like the time-" 

"Look, if you want me to chuck this steaming bowl of Ninja Noodles at you, just finish your sentence," Cloud said, and they both laughed. 

"Nah." She grinned. "Never mind." 

He grinned back at her and took another bite. "Mmm?" he asked as she gave him a pensive look. 

"I just figured out what's different," she said, "you never used to smile so much." 

"You're right. I never did."

"What did you do, last year, anyways?"

He gave her a long look. "Last year?"

*

A/N: This chapter is so fluffy, and the one person I can owe it to.. Shin-Chan! Okay.. don't watch that series if you want to have children, ne? Anyways, at this point in time, all Roku can say is, I'm glad people are patient enough to put up with me –those who have spoken with me know that if anyone is interested in where this is going, it's me. So, let's hope no one OD's on excessive fluff (a Valentine's donation? Hmm..) and stick wit' meh, next chapter will be all about my fiancé, Cloud.


	6. Weddings and Such

Finally. Chapter Six. Confused customers can leave complaints at the review corner, where all other wacko's are assisted as well. Snogs, people. Hope those of you who got a preview aren't dissapointed. 

At the wedding... 

Tifa had brought an extra dress, in case something went wrong. Something always did. She and Cloud had gotten to Rocket Town in a delightful little plane that Cid had had fly over to Kalm, and with that they were at the wedding within a day. The pilot of the propellor plane turned out to be one of the airship crew from their previous adventures, and the three of them had a lovely time catching up as the journey progressed.  
'Nice dress,' Cloud commented when she came out of her hotel room. She had just changed into her pretty reddish-purple silk dress.   
'Thank you,' she smiled. 'You don't look too bad yourself.'  
He actually looked quite stunning in his dark blue suit and light tie. His light hair and handsome features stuck out above the dark colors gorgeously, and the tie brought out the color of his eyes maliciously well. Not that she would ever tell him.  
He grinned at her. That was another thing - he had the cutest smile on the planet. She hadn't really known that before, because he never used to smile during that turbulent period where they went and saved the world. She was surprised to feel a blush creep up to her face. She quickly started walking so he wouldn't notice.   
'We're late!' 

* 

Tifa smiles. Was this where the daydream started? Was this where she had started to grow confused, nervous, ecstatic? Was it before all this? Far before, Had she started to dream the moment she had answered a ringing telephone, a year ago?

The smile leaves. Perhaps, she tells herself, perhaps it isn't quite a dream, and perhaps that is why you are so bothered by it all. 

* 

Cid looked strapping, a black tuxedo perfect on his strong figure. He stood rigidly still, up at the front by the altar, Barret beside him, looking splendid as well. Cid wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. His eyes rested with a slightly troubled gaze on the walkway in the middle of the church, and occasionally shifted up to the entrance.   
Cloud let Tifa go first to where they would stand up front, whispering, 'we're not _that _late,' and she mock-glared at him.   
'The organ hasn't started playing yet, at any rate.' Cloud continued to her, but froze as a swell of music blared from the long metal windpipes of the organ.   
Tifa raised an eyebrow at Cloud, and he shut up with a shrug. 

Shera was a beautiful woman.  
Cloud exhaled softly after she walked up, holding the arm of a familiar elderly man with a long beard and lashless eyes. Tifa's eyes widened in appreciation. Shera had always hidden her features behind an overly large pair of glasses, her curly brown hair pulled back tight in a pony tail. Without glasses, she had deep, dark honeybrown eyes, arched eyebrows. With her hair down, curls circled her soft face. Not to mention the dress was the sweetest thing Tifa had ever seen.   
'I want curls too, if they'll make me look like that. And I want a dress like that.' Tifa breathed to Cloud after Cid and Shera had gone through the long run of Promises and Vows and all that holy tripe weddings largely consisted of. In between applauses, no one noticed Tifa commenting and Cloud trying not to crack up.   
He laughed now, through the eruption of that last applause, and whispered back that she looked fine the way she was, but curls would be pretty too. And did she know how expensive a dress like that was?   
'You're no help,' she mouthed to him.  
He cast her a sidelong glance, and smirked at her.   
She glared furiously at him for a moment, as she realized she was blushing again. She hated it when he did rubbish like that, giving her those.. those horrid arrogant looks that would make any girl blush, even a grounded, intelligent girl like herself. She pressed her lips together and tried very hard to ignore her attractive friend for the rest of the ceremony. Which was difficult for the fact that she could see, from the corner of her vision, that he kept looking at her. 

* 

Oh yes, thinks Tifa.   
Innocence. We were both very full of innocence and life and good hope. She recoils from the machines in front of her, she draws herself back into the kitchen, where there are no things she doesn't understand, except for one absence. But his words ring fresh in her mind still, and she knows she is tired and impatient like a child, and she knows she shouldn't be.  
She is afraid of something, something making itself very slowly, very gently known to her subconscious. There's something, says her subconscious to her, that you have been taking into account, and it's about time that you think about what it is. Pay closer attention to him. Does he seem to be having a good time?  
No, she admits. Not at all.  
There you are, says her subconscious. Now, does he seem to hate you, or not want to be around you?  
I don't know, replies Tifa stonily, you tell me.  
Alright then, I'll tell you. No he does not hate you, and he wants to be around you.  
Why then, is everything so..  
Difficult? Finishes her subconscious for her.  
Perhaps.  
Quite so. Try talking to him, Lockhart.  
Talk.. talk to him?   
Shh, says the subconscious, here's your chance. 

The phone rings flatly in the living room.

* 

Both Shera and Cid were absolutely radiant. Tifa let out a happy sigh and then a strangled cough, as the newlywed couple carefully wielded between them a suspiciously large knife ('Cloud..?' She had prompted with narrowed eyes, to which he had let out a short laugh, and said something like, 'well, it's not the Buster or the Ragnarok, but hey, when they asked me for a cutting instrument, they said they had some pretty big CAKE') which proceeded to slice through their wedding cake –three stories –much like the hot knife through the proverbial butter. 'I'm so happy for Shera,' she said softly to Cloud. 'It took Cid so long before he realized what she meant to him,' Tifa didn't notice Cloud's peculiar expression as she continued, 'men are so dense.'

He snorted softly. 'Right. All of us, I suppose?'  
'Well, yes!' She beamed at him, paused for a moment and they both obediently applauded, along with the rest of the congregation. After the applause had died down, and everyone rose to go and congratulate the new couple, and get some CAKE, she and Cloud stayed put to enjoy this delicious argument to its full extent.  
'Men are not all dense,' Cloud said, playfully defensive.  
'Yes, all of you are. Even the sensitive ones. If we want something, we can't be subtle, the way we can be when we're with other women. We have to be totally open and direct and clear, otherwise you won't know what we're talking about.'  
'That's not true,' he replied huffily.  
'You know it is.'  
'There are exceptions-'  
'And exceptions are what confirm my theory.'  
'But-'  
'Cloud, if you ask a girl what she wants for her birthday, and she laughs and says it's alright, you don't need to buy anything, what do you do?'  
Cloud could feel he was walking into this one eyes open. Still..   
'Don't buy anything..?  
'Wrong,' she said triumphantly, allowing him a moment's aggravation in rolling his eyes. He stood up to go get some CAKE, and she rose to follow, still talking.  
'If a girl laughs and says you _don't need to buy anything_ it means she's not going to make any demands on you or your money, it means she's leaving the choice to you, and giving you total freedom to buy her a gift. But i can tell you she is expecting _something_.'  
'Well, how the hell am i supposed to know? She says I don't need to buy her anything, I don't buy her anything, it's as easy as that.'  
'And that is why men are, generally, dense.' Tifa smiled charmingly at him, he stared back at her.  
'Right, Tifa.'  
She shrugged. 'You do, of course, understand what to do when it's my birthday?'  
He looked at her and then grinned. 'Not take your answer seriously when I ask you what you what you want.'

* 

Come to think of it, reflects Tifa now, he didn't take me a bit seriously when we celebrated my birthday.. 

* 

He had asked her what she wanted, and, remembering their conversation at Shera's wedding, she laughed, and said he didn't need to get her anything. And she gave him a big fat wink to enlighten him a little.  
'What's the wink for,' he asked, 'or is it there just to show how dense I really am?' looking down at her with an arrogantly expectant look which melted unguarded into something different.  
'Oh no, Cloud..' she said, rolling her eyes up and away from his, 'I told you there were exceptions, remember?'  
'So you're saying now that, on second thought, I'm not so dense, maybe?'  
She smiled at him. 'That's _not_ what I said. Sorry.'  
'You are a horrid creature, Lockhart, you must have been told that before –'  
'Actually, you're one of the few that knows my true nature, I suppose in that way, you're quite an exception..'  
'I feel so lucky.'  
'You should. It's not everyone so blessed as to get to hang out with the likes of me.'  
'That's true, I suppose.. but then, one needs to ask the question: are there not many who hang out with, in your own words, the likes of you, because _you_ don't want them to, or because _they_ don't want t –'  
'Shut up, you cretin!' she cried joyfully, and attacked him. 

* 

Tifa can feel herself crinkle at the memory, it's comfortable and a little worn out, as if it were an old book or plaything. She remembers that they wrestled about for a bit, and ended up doing various other things as well. She sees a head of short cropped curls appear, with the thin body attached to it.  
'They're leaving now,' says Freyj. 'Perhaps you'd like to come and say goodbye.'  
Tifa won't meet her eyes. Her arms are tight around her middle, her dinner stands before her on the table, barely touched. She has known this moment to come for a long time now..  
'I'll be there in a moment.'  
Freyj nods and turns to leave again. She stops when Tifa sharply says, 'Don't –'  
'Don't what?' Freyj demands, never quite the patient or the eloquent one of the lot.  
'Don't let Cloud leave without having spoken with me first,' Tifa finishes, rather miserably.  
'Right,' says Freyj, and leaves.

Tifa sighs to herself. In an ideal world, he walks into the kitchen now, and talks to her. He tells her he will miss her or something sentimental of the sort, he will do something physical to her, a hug or a kiss would be nice.  
But it is not without good reason that she has called that the 'ideal world'. In the Real World, he will stand and wait restlessly outside, eye her and keep her at a distance, let her do the talking before he utters a short, stiff goodbye.   
Things used to be easier, Tifa thinks, and puts her plate of dinner on the floor for the dog to eat. 


	7. Seven's a prevvie, lads

A snatch of Preview for those of you too lazy to tell me you desperately need me to send it to you! (j/k j/k) anyways, yeah. And cuddles to Ryu-sama, because I was mean. Sorry, hun. I'm just a bitch =3   
So, this chapter and the last is what I'm leaving you lot with for now~ when my school and life lighten up, I'll be able to put more time and concentration into this. 

Outside, a little girl walks past. In her arms is a solemn porcelain doll with blonde curls. The little girl looks cross, and she holds the doll uncarefully, her arm wrapped around the stuffed torso. The doll's arms hang blankly forwardand sway a little in the little girl's rhythm. The doll's neck is stiff, the head straight on its base. Tifa is distracted in watching the little girl who seems so angry. Her lips are pursed and her own neck is stiff. Her own blonde curls bounce concisely as the girl strides tightly up to Cloud.

'I have to give this to you but I don't want to,' she states. Cloud looks down at her in slight confusion. Tifa watches on as the little girl sort of half-throws and half-drops the doll at Cloud's feet. The doll remains uncomfortably on the ground, flat on her porcelain face. Cloud frowns and bends down to pick up the doll. Her face is cracked and bits of the porcelain lie on the ground, coloring it white like chalk.

'Are you sure you want to give me your doll?' He asks.

The little girl's face screws up and she won't meet his eyes or say anything. She scowls up at the doll, who is staring off into space, bits of plaster caught in the black horsehair eyelashes.

The doll lips are tiny and pouty, scraped white in some places. The little girl oversees the damage she has caused to her plaything, and lets out a bawl at an incredible pitch. Tifa's shoulders draw together in a wince and Cloud watches as the girl runs off, throwing a furious temper tantrum. 

* 

Cloud steps into the kitchen; it is small and packed with metal hardware tools. He rummages bravely -but only briefly so -through sticky cabinets. There are brownish dried splatters on the inside of something that was hopefully food, but that is all that there is.   
He looks at his fingers dubiously, and then washes his hands in the sink. He uses a lot of soap. The faucet lets out a low wailing noise, and quickly he turns it off again.   
'Alright..' He nods decisively to himself, and then stares blankly about for a bit. He really should clean this place up. His nose wrinkles and he leaves, quickly.

* 

The first few months he would ask anyone he met about a girl with long brown hair in a white shirt and a black skirt, who helped people. No one could tell him anything. The ShinRa sattelites had gone down, and the PHS system went crashing with them. Right after he had called her that one time, when she hadn't gotten back on the airship, the phones had stopped working. 

To be quite honest, it was mostly his pride that had not let him go with her right then and there. As they watched her walking away, growing smaller as she neared the horizon, the others had urged him to jump out and follow her.  
'It's what she wants, you asshole,' Yuffie had said. Everyone had nodded. Cloud shook his head. If Tifa had wanted him with her, she would have waited. This was something she seemed to want to do alone, she didn't need Cloud. 

* 

One day Cloud wakes up, claustrophobic in his tiny room. There isn't anything in the room, not besides him and the bed and something that faintly resembles a closet. He does not keep his clothing in it. He only has three shirts and two pairs of trousers, anyway. He has a kitchen where he can cook simple meals for himself, and a quaint tub/shower combination thing which makes it infallibly impossible to take either a real bath or a real shower because of its questionable size. Each time he sees it he envisions a bent old woman using it to wash her cat.

His room is in a smallish inn built just outside Midgar. Besides getting severely shaken up, the place was left unharmed in the wake of the disaster. He pays a high rental, but that's alright. This way he's right close by to where they've asked him to support the building of a large communal farm. Midgar had exported steel and mako, and all ShinRa's products, but for the populace of Midgar's food, import had been necessary. Just like flowers didn't survive, neither did the animals in Midgar. Except for the pigeons, and they had been ugly buggers, big and smelly with thick tumorous claws, having absorbed more mako than they could into their fowl biology. At any rate, all the meat eaten in Midgar was from farms around Kalm, and near the forests to the west of Fort Condor. The fish had come from Junon, but the seas had been polluted, and good fish was expensive. Now the farmers who had exported all their goods to Midgar had been left hanging- until they received a notice from the Asgar Ring. 

The Asgar Ring is a committee of people trying to give the survivors of the disaster, the current inhabitants of the Midgar Ring, the economical kick in the backside that they needed. 


	8. Magic Box

The Continuation.. chopped into two seperate halves in this chapter, like a magician would his lovely assistant, with a saw. Only better.  
  
*  
  
'Fancy that,' Malien said, turning the tin over in her hands, 'this would make a lovely tea box.'  
  
Tifa smiled and kept working. With Malien, everything was tea boxes -if you could put something inside something, well then you could certainly put tea in it. Tifa had never cared to pay attention to the details of Malien's room, but in a way she felt sure that Malien must have a corner or a drawer somewhere, filled with tins and jars and boxes in their turn filled with tea.  
  
They were sorting through a bag of things which Tifa had bought at the local thrift shop. 'Seventeen cents an item, mum,' the fat man with the red nose and the scruffy beard told her, then turned back to his book. It looked old and valuable, with gold lining the pages, the black leather of the book faded but still firm in place.  
  
She was confused for a moment when he called her 'mum', but then she stopped to consider he was saying 'ma'am' in his accent.  
  
Her own crystal-sharp Nibel dialect had long faded, making way for the soft and melancholic sounds of the subterranean-Midgar accent. On top of the Plate they spoke the language properly, gutteral and trickling like sewage water.  
  
She guessed the man who called her 'mum' was from an older time of Kalm, then; from before that the refugees from Midgar had flooded the town. Now Kalm had become a metropolis, a melting-pot. There was barely any local accent to be heard, but instead of that the city had gained voice and breath, and with all the people rolling about in her bowels like marbles in a linnen sack, the city inhaled and exhaled, and hummed steadily. Sometimes at night, her breathing would nearly die away, becoming tiny and rythmic like a baby on its back. Sometimes at night, possibly mostly on Saturdays, the city would be screaming and yelling, panting and groaning. When the sun shone she laughed. When it rained she drew in a dreadfully long deep breath each time, and sighed it out again.  
  
Tifa recognized the city's breathing; the sense of grand life embracing you as you walk down the main shopping street. She loved Kalm.  
  
Besides that, it seemed that Kalm loved her. The Walhalla was doing well. Even though the Inn was filled mostly with refugees who were paying their stay by working for her, the little shop was doing very well (low prices) and the restaurant already had a good name (low prices) and besides, the number of guests for the inn was already increasing (you guessed it).  
  
There was just the one problem, the one problem she didn't ever talk about with anyone -she was alone.  
So there was the problem, and the explanation that nobody knew of the problem, rolled into one and the same. On the one hand, she needed someone to help her run the three businesses she had coughed up. One the other hand, she wanted someone to be her closest friend and confide. And she didn't really want to share her private emotions with Malien.  
  
So one night, sitting behind her faithful computer in her faithful office typing away on her faithful keyboard, she composed a sign.  
'Help Wanted', the sign read. Then it went on to describe the function and the responsabilities, etc. You know what these kind of signs look like. When it was printed, Tifa sat back in her chair and held it out in front of her. Was the lettering big enough? Did it draw attention? Any spelling mistakes? She caught two letters that should have been with a capital, and saw that she had spelled her own name wrong: 'Lockhart' instead of 'Lockheart'. Ha-ha. Dear God, she thought, I need coffee.  
  
She corrected the mistakes and printed out another copy. There, that one's better. She shook her head at herself and stood up.  
  
Now then.. she had to hang up the sign. She paused mid-step, and antagonized. She wanted Cloud to see the poster when he walked in. In all truth, she wanted him to be the one who applied for the job. So then she shouldn't hang the sign up in the window. She should just tell him about it herself. But what if I do tell him, she worried, and he flat out declines? Then what? Better to have the sign in the window, otherwise he'll think I was counting on him. Or I could just say that I wanted to ask him first before I hung it in the window. But I could also just hang it in the window and let him ask. No- then he'd think I wouldn't want to offer him the job, because I never mentioned it. But what if I say, 'hey, did you see the sign in my window? What do you think?' and all he says is, 'you misspelled your last name'?  
  
She took a deep breath and walked to the stairs. Then that would be that. Then she would just have to live with it; someone else applying and getting the job, and Cloud could come and visit on Tuesdays, or something. Caught up in her thoughts as she was, she didn't notice someone running up the stairs until they ran into her. 'Ah!' she exclaimed in surprise, but didn't hit the ground because Cloud caught her on time. She had dropped the paper that said 'Help Wanted' on it. It wafted to the ground.  
  
'Gotcha,' he said, with a winning smile, straightened her and gave her a peck on the cheek. 'Hi, Tifa!'  
  
She blinked at him, taking a moment to react. 'Hi! What pills were you fed?' she asked evenly, meriting a playful scowl from Cloud. 'No pills no pills. Just having a good day.'  
  
She smiled. 'I'm glad you've come to share it with me.'  
  
He nodded and reached down. 'You dropped this when we collided,' he said, and then peered at the paper. After a moment's read, he looked up at her, blue eyes seeming bluer than usual in the intensity of his look. 'You're looking for someone to work here?'  
  
She felt herself blush, and grew uncomfortable. 'I just printed it out..' she said, as if it were an excuse. 'I need help. Like, a deputy or something.' She shrugged and watched him skim the paper a little longer. 'What do you think?' she asked him. Then she pressed her eyes shut. Here it comes. What do you think, Cloud? I think you misspelled your own last name, Tifa. Yup. He's going to say it. I can't believe I forgot to correct that the second time I printed it out. Here it comes.  
  
'When can I start?' was all he said, and after approximately 4.6 seconds of staring at him open-mouthed, that loose jaw tightened into a grin, then loosened again in laughter. Score!  
  
*  
  
And that was how they'd come to be, all over again. It was the most comfortable thing in the world to live and work together with Cloud; like they'd been doing it a thousand years already.  
  
Tifa remembers it with clarity; which is only logical. It wasn't very long ago, not at all. But so much has happened since then, both she and Cloud have changed so severely.. it's like this life she leads now is different completely, like she died and came back again. But then, she's good at that. She remembers the first time she died and came back.  
  
She died at Nibelheim, that day. When she came back she was elsewhere. Midgar.  
  
*  
  
It was not that she did not know that the train graveyard was a very dangerous place; it was simply that she did not care.  
  
She clambered onto the ancient, rusting skeleton of a long-discarded train, and folded her legs beneath her as she sat down. The metal and decaying dirt surrounding her struck her as the scene for a hopelessly desolate play. The whole graveyard held that atmosphere of hopelessness, as if the trains were grieving as they passed to dust unguarded.  
  
She looked up, from habit of looking up, and saw the woven metal framework of pipes and trays and beams, that was the very base of the Seventh Plate of Midgar. Even from the half a mile's distance that stood between her and it, she felt claustrophobic from beneath. Even from where she sat, hunkered near the massive train-wraith of iron, she could hear the endless metallic hum of the frosted gargantuan tube lights suspended under the Plate, making for but a sad excuse for starlight.  
  
She looked apathetically out over all of Sector Seven. Unnaturally blue and green-lighted mist hung lazily a few feet above the ground. The Pillar stood off a ways to her right; beyond it, more to the left, she could see the Weapon Shop, the Materia Shop. A wry smile flickered on her features and died again. The bar.  
  
She pulled her legs closer to her body, and wrapped her arms around them. She should go back soon. Barret would start getting worried. She always came here, even though there were steel-colored iridescent ghosts, small gossamer-winged dragons, and a freak carrying a staff, with half a horse and half a chariot beneath him, instead of legs. She felt at home here, alone with her thoughts, away from the gloom that no one else seemed to recognize, deep in the slums. She had never really felt like she belonged with the living anyways.  
  
That thought was new, and entertained her for a little longer than most thoughts did. As of late, she had not been able to interest herself for anything for very long, as if she were living in a state of dreams, shadowed away from reality, watching everything through a distorted lens. A faint childhood memory of reading a scientific book, with a chapter on fisheyes, came to mind.  
  
Troubled with the image of a fisheye hovering, taking the place of her own on opposite sides of her nose on her face, she sprang up, and jumped off the train. It was only a small leap to the ground, and she did it without thinking. Suddenly though, as she turned, she was struck with the strangest sense of forbearing, and fear, and realisation of something, and turned and studied the train.  
  
Now she saw it was lying on its side, an oversized 5 painted on the naked, sky-turned flank. She imagined it, upright and without the paint cracked and scraped off. She imagined that people had ridden inside, day in and day out. Some riding back and forth to work, others taking a rare luxury, a trip. Her jaw fixed as she imagined what might have caused the giant gash in the front. Her mouth pursed as she estimated how many people might have died. Not wanting to think any more of it, she turned her back to the dead train, and marched solidly off. The train and the ghosts in it followed her silently, glidingly, to the end of the street.  
  
*  
  
A thousand tiny deaths is what she had died, once. Each time she thought about her parents she died again; they were in the ghost train that day, when it trailed after her. She died when she tried to remember the faces of her classmates in Nibelheim and realized she could not. She died when she remembered Cloud and hated him. She died again, from lack of anything else to do, when she was living in the slums. That time, it was Cloud who brought her to life.  
  
*  
  
She was used to the strange experiences with the people in the slums.  
  
Once, she had been attacked by some man, a sex-deprived maniac no doubt. She had easily been able to overpower him, and had not thought of it again.  
  
Once, a young boy had called out to her with a toothless mouth, and she had given him all the gil she had with her so he could buy some bread for himself and his sister.  
  
Once, a woman had tugged her sleeve, her tear-streaked, hollow face a fearsome sight. She had caught the woman as she swooned, and had taken her back to the bar. After nursing her for a few days, the woman had lost her fever, and gained a few pounds. She had watched with a heavy heart as the woman went, waving gratefully to her. She always needed people to come into her life and keep her busy, keep her distracted. And as she watched the woman hobble off, she wished they might have traded places, perhaps, and she could have been free from eyes watching, mouths grinning.  
  
She walked by an alley, and slowed as she heard rather dubious noises coming from it. She raised her eyebrows and wondered if it was another sex- deprived maniac. Curiosity invited her eyes down the alley, and she froze. It was not some guy being a sex-crazed maniac.  
  
It was a young man, and he was fighting to stay standing. He was leaning heavily against a wall, panting so hard he sounded as if he were choking. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to see better in the artificial light. Sweat beaded on his bare upper-arms and face, running down in places between the muscles where the droplets had grown too fat to defy gravity. His jaw seemed clenched in pain. His eyes were pressed shut, eyebrows heavily pressed above them. He ran his free hand across his face, but it did not make any difference. He fell back against the wall, the other arm no longer able to support his full weight. Sickly, he slid to the ground, small shivers running over his skin. She saw him reach for something.  
  
She swallowed and cursed herself for thinking she needed someone to take care of. At any rate, this man needed care. She suddenly felt small, and useless, and felt that, no matter how many sex-crazed maniacs she was able to take on, this man she would never be able to lift a finger against.  
  
This thought scared her incredibly, more than any thought had scared her at all in the past seven months. To defy this thought, she stepped forward, and knelt beside the young man, where he sat on the ground. Shoulders hung forwards weakly, his breath had slowed. Eyes stared half-open at the mighty sword he held tightly gripped in his hand.  
  
She toughened herself, and pressed a hand to his forehead. He burned with fever. He drew in a long shivering breath, and blinked. After a moment, his back arched, she imagined in pain. His head, young face adorned with straight, noble features, righted itself, and she met the most fascinating eyes she would ever see for the rest of her life.  
  
She bit her lip and wondered why she was hoping she knew him.  
  
*  
  
Tifa had saved the world that day, when she found him.  
  
*  
  
She stood in the kitchen, feeling immensely sad, and heavy. A schoolbook image from her youth came forward, and she frowned. The god Atlas carried the world on his shoulders. She imagined it feeling something like this. Not as if she had the world on her shoulders, she knew that. Only her own.  
  
There was always this feeling of alone, though. She was always alone, in everything, except for when she was taking care of Barret and Marlene. And then, in taking care of them, she was alone. She shook her head and went back to work. The bar would open again in the evening.  
  
The young man had been doing well, it having been nearly a week since she had found him. It had taken her considerably more difficulty to bring him to the bar than to care for him afterwards. The first two days he had lain like a breathing corpse in his bed. He had slept incredible hours, so deep and so peaceful that she had the strange feeling that he had not slept like this in a long time. When he was not sleeping, the first two days, he was trying to sit up. She always gently pushed him back down, with a faint shaking of her head, letting a ghost of a smile play on her lips. He had not spoken a word yet, neither had she. Sometimes he drew deep breath, and then his jaw went slack, as if he had forgotten what he would like to say. Or as if he had forgotten how to say it. She never asked him anything, only studied him. She would not quite admit to herself she was fascinated.  
  
She studied him when he was asleep as much as when he was awake. When he was asleep, he did not know. When he was awake, he studied the girl back. She did not mind his quiet, softly inquisitive gaze, even as it was in a blank set face. She hoped he did not mind her gazing at him. For days and days, her head pounded with the question who he was, why he seemed so dreadfully familiar.  
  
After the first two days, he could sit up without collapsing. She had not spoken to him yet, nor he to her. Her smile had grown a little wider as he successfully kept himself up, supporting himself. She put a hand over his.  
  
He looked up; his eyes flashed at her.  
  
She was hurled into something unknown, deep and blue and so the smile on her face stiffened, and threatened to fail. He was.. she could not place it. She forced herself to keep looking, and after another moment of confusion and wonder, his eyes became less mystical, less difficult to meet. They were simply blue -deep, bright blue, long dark lashes casting shadows above them. Articulate eyebrows above. They were darker than the color of his hair, which was a gentle hue of gold..  
  
A spirit drifted into her, a discolored and stained old bat, fluttering crookedly, blinded by the new light. These memories had flown away a long time ago, and she righted her back tensely as she tried to call them to mind. The bat fell to dust and she was left with the young man with the golden hair and the slightly darker eyebrows and the lovely eyes and the good-looking body, and she was left with confusion. She smiled that meaningless, frightened smile again, and left, still not having talked to him.  
  
His expression had not changed the whole time he had been there. It always held the most odd combination of wonder and wisdom. It was as if he had already seen every insanity, felt every pang of guilt, and had already lived every second of a lethal, swollen wound. And still, even with this weight around him, he still held childlike innocence around him like a cloak, innocence and acceptance of what was happening to him.  
  
This paradox, this same impossible mix of adulthood and childhood, this was what she had always felt. Wonder because often enough she felt young and naïve at everything she encountered. Wisdom because other times she saw that she had insight and understanding that were beyond her mere twenty years.  
  
She padded into the kitchen and started doing dishes only because she did not really know what else she could do. Almost savagely she grabbed the first glass and scrubbed it under a rushing song of hot water.  
  
Her hands were not really soft anymore; her ever-taxing training, and working here in the bar had taken care of that. She shrugged, and kept rubbing at the one stupid bit of rubbish clinging to the one stupid glass. She stopped, and stared down at the same hands in question. They were not really very long hands, or very pretty hands. Her nails were always ragged, bitted down to beneath the rim. Her cuticles were always torn, sometimes even bleeding. She wore gloves usually, thin suede gloves she had stolen out of a shop once. Her weapons slipped over these easily.  
  
She scrubbed the third glass fanatically, trying to draw her attention away from the thought which was stubbornly presenting itself to her. She always took her gloves off when she cared for him. Him.  
  
Well, of course, she reasoned immediately, how can you take care of a sick man when you are wearing gloves? Touching him was something she wanted to do with her skin, not with her weapons. This thought shocked her considerably, and her hands grew vehement as they cleaned the dishes.  
  
His eyes were visible, in the back of her mind. Then, maybe it was not the image of his eyes themselves so much as that it was the feelings the eyes summoned in her. She figured it did not really matter which it was; it came down to the fact that she felt that way when she thought of his eyes. Her teeth bit restlessly into her bottom lip. Do the fucking dishes.  
  
Knife. Fork. Glass. Pan. Fork. Glass. Glass. His eyes. Glass. Blood.  
  
Her nose wrinkled, her mouth opening slightly to let out a quiet cry of surprise. How did that just happen? She held her hand up to her face; she swallowed in confusion. There was a smeared shard of glass, about three inches long, jutting out of the palm of her right hand. Blood traced the jagged edge where it had cut into the skin and flesh. It was deep, she saw, but somehow she could not be moved to pull it out. She watched in silent, macabre fascination as her blood, the airless color of deep red, mixed unnaturally with the dish soap and ran to the back of her hand, where it dripped unceremoniously down into the beladen sink.  
  
She gingerly touched the glass sticking out of her hand, and noted it was rather sore but not that bad. Maybe it was just the shock. The soap stung into the wound, no doubt cleaning it at the same time, either cleaning it or poisoning it.  
  
Carefully, ever so carefully, she touched the wedge of glass in her hand again. A feeling of surreality, of insubstantiality settled upon her, and she could not draw away her eyes. She did not notice how a tall figure stood silently in the doorway to the kitchen, and watched her, and after a few moments, grew a little tired, and opened his mouth to speak.  
  
"Tifa."  
  
Her head snapped up at him, her hand flashed away from the glass-cut one like lightning. Why the feeling of being a deer, trapped between pavement and headlights? The young man's expression was open and clear as always, his eyes meeting hers blankly.  
  
Her mouth opened but she did not know to say what. His eyes rested on the broken glass, which was still in the palm of her hand, and his eyebrows drew together. She suddenly realised she had never told the young man her name. And she knew sure as hell that Barret had never told him either.  
  
He walked over to her, taking careful, deliberate steps. She grew desperate as he neared her.  
  
"What did you do?" he asked in that same soft voice with which he had uttered her name, her secret, and she was nailed to the very spot. The glass had not gone through, luckily. She thought she would have fainted if she had seen the faint glint of glass coming out in between the bones of the back of her hand.  
  
"It was an accident." she said, taken aback by the rather broken ring to her voice.  
  
He took her right hand lightly in his left, his palm pressing up against the back of her hand. Her blood ran cold. He was a head taller than she was. She looked up at him as he studied her hand for a moment, then carefully switched it to his right hand as he turned away to search.. he grabbed a clean rag from a pile of them, and turned to her again.  
  
He met her eyes.  
  
"Let me pull it out. It is pretty deep, but we can stop the bleeding."  
  
She looked back at him, only vaguely aware of the vacant look she must be giving him. "Okay." she said after a moment.  
  
Her jaw tightened only a little as he swiftly freed the glass from her hand. She let him tug her over to the sink and rinse out any splinters that might be left. She thought it was pleasant to feel him taking care of her.  
  
"How did you know my name?" she asked the young man. He met her eyes so easily, even with that void expression to them.  
  
He frowned lightly, for such a long time she thought she had not said the question out loud.  
  
Then he looked up, blue eyes piercing. Was he angry at her?  
  
"You are Tifa Lockheart, right?" his voice had something of a dare in it. Dare me wrong.  
  
"Yes, I am."  
  
"Good. I was afraid I had mistaken you for someone else."  
  
Now, as she gazed at him, she was silent. Her hand had begun to throb lightly, but it did not bother her that much. She watched him, trying but failing hopelessly in discovering who the young man was.  
  
"I.. forgive me. You seem so familiar, but I cannot seem to find your name, if I ever knew it -" she spoke hurriedly, and hurriedly he interrupted her.  
  
"Cloud."  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"My name is Cloud Strife."  
  
She stared at him emptily for another moment, as her tired brain clicked into discovering, into matching name and memory.  
  
*  
  
A/N: anybody who's reading.. I've taken it off hiatus for a while, this fic, to see what I can do to save it.. please. Forgive me if I fail. I promise to try, at least. My regards, I promise to explain this complex stuff soon. :) have a nice day. 


	9. Earth Shifts I

AN: Hey guys, roku here. A big thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. it's really, really sweet and lovely of you and it is the main reason i'm finishing this sorry excuse for a story. 

Let me explain a lot to you right now. My life is a small mess right now, and ff7 fanfiction has slipped down to the bottom of my list along with stamp collecting and dating (laugh it up XP). but i'd gotten such nice feedback for this story, even though i've had such problems with it.. i figured at least i owed people an end. so this is the beginning of the end. The thing is that I actually have like ten more chapters with a whole different (and the aforementioned darker) storyline, involving a lot of the game's mythology.. but I have such little time to concentrate on it. Right now i figure, better just finish this with the little pride i have left than just keep drawing the story out. maybe one day i'll finish it properly. *bows* domo. * 

Chapter 8.. Earth Shifts I 

* 

The restaurant was packed.  
Full to the rim. Every table taken. People waiting outside to get a table. Waiting impatiently like all hungry people do.   
Tifa couldn't blame them. She was also a dangerous person when hungry. 

As it was, she was asking people seated at tables with extra space if they minded sharing their table with another couple of diners. 

'It's our theme night, "Make New Friends",' Tifa joked hopelessly to an older pair of guests. They were dressed in expensive-looking eveningwear. 

They smiled blandly at Tifa, who was feeling rather haggard in their overwhelmingly fashionable presence, but nonetheless the two allowed another chique older couple (Tifa had picked them out; she assumed this would at least give them clothing to talk about) to seat themselves at their table. Tifa hid a smile and whooshed off to the next table. Cloud was doing the same as she; they grinned at each other in passing.

Tifa'd even put to use the little breakfasting room for the inn; a few young, regular guests had asked if they could sit there, apparently having no problem with wooden benches and lanterns lit along the wall. It _was_ a nice atmosphere, Tifa decided. She and Cloud loved to have breakfast there. 

'I'm feeling a little embarrassed,' she confessed in a mutter to him as they hurried by each other.

'At the rate you're going you'll have to add another wing to the building,' Cloud said, making a mock-professional assessment face, 'no reason to be embarrassed.'

An hour later, things had settled a little. There were barely anymore people waiting. Tifa stood at the door between the dining hall and the kitchen. Her chefs were being marvelous and her waitresses and waiters too. It was no easy feat to deal with such an overload. She wiped a sheen of sweat from the bridge of her nose and went over to the bar to set things up. It would open soon, and she had the first shift; nine through one. 

As the kitchen closed and the restaurant cleared, the bar seeped full of people. Tifa was cheerful enough to cope with the humdrum, but felt more than slightly relieved when Cloud appeared by her side to help.

'If I still owned my own soul I'd give it to you right now,' she told him fervently, as she threw together a B-52 shot. 

'How is it you don't own your soul?' he asked, lightly frowning. He poured out a clear green poisonous-looking liquid and mixed it with orange juice.

'Lost it in a poker game last year,' she said, winking at a customer who left a generous tip.

'Hey Lockheart! Since when do you make your boyfriend help at the bar?' one man shouted. 

'He's not my boyfriend!' Tifa shouted back. 'He's way better than any boyfriend!' 'Your husband?'

'No, he's my assistant-manager!'

And she saw Cloud shake his head and grin at her. 

Finally, Cliff the bartender arrived. Cliff was a big chunk of a man, curly brown hair covering his head, a frizzy brown beard extending in all directions. He always reminded Tifa of Barret Wallace, except Cliff was more.. lumberjacky. But he could handle any crowd perfectly; not to mention he made a mean Bloody Mary.

Cliff clapped Cloud on the shoulder and tugged him out of the bar; then he grabbed Tifa in a great big bear hug. She squealed in surprise, narily balancing the expensive mix in her hands.

'It's Tifa's bedtime! Bedtime for Tifa!' he said cheerfully, not putting her down. From the corner of her eye she saw Cloud's face close up. For some reason he and Cliff never got along.

'Cliff.. Cliff, I've got to give this to the nice man down there..' Tifa said, holding the drink at an arm's length. 

All Tifa saw when Cliff put her down was the relieved look on Cloud's face. 

As they walked away, Cliff behind them ruling the bar like his palace, Tifa looked up to her friend and poked his arm. 'Hey, what is it?'

Cloud gave her a look. 'I don't like how he treats you. Like you're some little girl.'

She smirked. 'To him I am, I guess. He's so huge.'

'Not much taller than me,' Cloud grumbled. 

'I never said you were short or anything,' she rolled her eyes. 

'Sure.' 

She hid her grin without success. 'Men are such babies.' 'You mock me, Lockheart.' 

'Never!' 'Right.' He ruffled her hair and stepped ahead to open the door to their shared kitchen. She rolled her eyes again, but this time at herself. 

She sat down on a chair and watched him move around the kitchen, making tea. 

'Green, jasmine, or chrysanthemum?' he asked her, holding up three packages. 

'Whatever doesn't have caffeine in it,' she said back, feeling sleepy now she was finally sitting.

'Green tea it is,' he replied, and tossed the teabag into the thermos. 

'Cloud Strife, I don't know what I'd do without you.' Cloud gave her a sidelong grin. 'You'd make your own tea, for one.' 

'I'm serious,' she smiled.

'So am I!' he exclaimed, waving the empty package of tea at her. 

'You've been here only two months and already I can't remember what it was like before you. It's like my inn's history is divided in two eras: b.c. and a.c. -before Cloud, and Anno Cloud. And b.c. was a very dark age indeed.' She said, standing up and going over to the counter. She got down the cookie jar and took out two. 

He raised his eyebrows. 'Somebody's got too much free time on their hands..' and he held out his hand for one of her cookies. 

She put them both in her mouth, and got a third one from the jar for him. 'These are the best cookies in the world,' she said with her mouth full. 'I baked them myself, you see.' 

He smirked, 'So I gathered. Now go back to what you were saying about how indispensable I was.' 

She laughed. 'You're so indispensable it hurts my head to think about what I'd do alone all day. Like get really bored.'

'What about Cliff? Is he just as indispensable as me?' Cloud asked suddenly.

'_Oh,_' said Tifa. And without a second thought she sidled up to Cloud and slipped her arms around his neck, a smirk on her face.

'Well, if you _must_ know..'

'Tifa!' Came Malien's voice from the stairwell.

'Be right there, Malien,' Tifa shouted back, not letting go of Cloud.

'You were saying,' Cloud said softly, his eyes on Tifa. 

'I was saying.. Cliff is also indispensable.' 

'Figured,' Cloud said, but seemed preoccupied with the fact of Tifa's arms around him.

'Tifaa!' Malien shouted again, sounding impatient. Cloud grinned at Tifa.

'Malien, give me a moment!'

'Go on,' murmured Cloud.

'Now, as I was saying, Cliff is indispensable.. but you're cuter.'

'Sounds reasonable,' Cloud seemed pleased with her answer. Tifa knew she was certainly pleased with it.

Cloud's face was awfully close by, wasn't it? She could feel his warm breath on her face, and she suddenly realized his arms were around her waist..

'Tifa! What are you-' 

Before anything good could happen, Tifa and Cloud pulled apart, blushing like adolescents. 

Malien stood at the bottom of the stairs, her face a curious mixture of anger, embarrassment and something that strongly resembled amusement. 

*


	10. Earth Shifts II

Here it is folks; the final chapter. I supposed I've ended this with some semblance of dignity. This is dedicated to Luna, for all her help and support and s&m lovin', and for proofreading for me (except not this one.. next one again, I promise!) 

* 

Chapter Nine; Earth Shifts II 

  
Time passed as it is wont to do. And as she was wont to need, Sass the dog needed a walk. 

'I'll be right back,' Tifa called up the stairs. Sassefrass was whining by the door. 

'Where are you going?' Cloud called back down. 

'Walk dog.' 

'Hold on; I'll go with you.' 

'That's okay, you don't need to. I won't be gone long.' 

'No, I want to come,' Cloud said, coming down the stairs. He smiled as he brushed past her. 

'Okay.. though I don't see why you feel the need.' Tifa smiled back, pulling a hat over her hair. Cloud handed her her coat without meeting her eyes, then put on his own. 

She watched him from the corner of her eye. He was a little red in the face; maybe it was too hot inside and he wanted to cool down. 

They strolled beside each other, comfortable in their silence, watching their breath like white smoke in the night air.  
Or at least Tifa was comfortable. She glanced over to Cloud at one point and realized that he looked upset. 

'What's going on?' she asked him. 

'Huh?' He looked startled. 

'You look unhappy. What's wrong?' 

He blinked at her. 'I'm not unhappy.' 

'Okay..' she said, trailing off in what she hoped was an encouraging way. 

He did not take it as encouragement but instead looked away again. She didn't know what to say now, and watched him, worried in her turn.

He stopped walking. She turned on her heel to face him. 

'Listen,' he said, blazing blue eyes focused on her. For a moment she thought to herself what a strange sight it was to see, his face barely illuminated by the street lamps, but lit with the power of a small green flashlight that was his eyes. 

'I'm listening,' she answered. 

'I need something to change. Life.. life is good right now, like it is, but it's not good enough.' 

Tifa squinted at him. What was he trying to say? 

'It's like we've stopped moving and I'm getting restless. I need to keep moving.' 

'You're going to have to be more blunt with me, Cloud.' 

'I'm tired with how things are, Tifa. But I don't know if the decision I want to make will be good for both of us.' 

'Uh huh.. wait. Wait. This means you're quitting? You're leaving Walhalla? Cloud, be clear! Don't beat around the bush like this!' 

He got an annoyed look on his face, stepped so close to her he could put an arm around her waist, and kissed her full on the lips. 

Tifa's first thought was, _oh nooo don't do that I taste like garlic_!   
Then she realized it was quite a statement for Cloud to be kissing her so.. let's call it fulfillingly.   
_Aaaaaaaaahh_. (that was her next thought. Imagine closing your eyes and settling down on the couch after a long day's work and getting a head massage. It was that kind of _aaaaaaaaahh_. And it kept going throughout the kiss, just think of it as a contented humming in the background to our story)  
Right after the indulgence that came with being unexpectedly kissed by her secret crush, she considered what he had just said to her. He was planning on leaving? He was restless, needed to keep moving? Bloody great.   
And what decision did he mean? The decision to leave? Of course it wouldn't be good for both of them! She didn't see anything getting better if he left. She'd certainly feel more bored and lonely and perhaps just a tiny bit heartbroken as well.   
Next thought: _The bastard! He can't just leave like that!_

So she broke off the kiss, exclaimed accusingly, 'You can't just kiss me like that after what you said!' and stalked off. 

His eyes bored into the back of her head but she did not turn around or say anything else, and dissapeared around the corner. 

He stood very still for a moment, then whistled for the dog to follow, and headed back towards the house. 

* 

She was waiting for him at the frontdoor, looking straight at him. For a moment they really saw each other. His expression was open and intense, and she felt something warm tug through her. She nodded, turning away from him, feeling stupid as her own eyes filled with tears.   
'I guess I understand..' she said, horrified as she heard her voice crack. 

He stared at her. 'Tifa?' 

She shook her head and opened the door, taking deep breaths to get rid of her traiterous tears. What was she supposed to think?   
_First he tells me he's getting bored here, next he kisses me! What kind of dumb thing is that? _

He came up to beside her, hands in the pockets of his jacket, not saying anything of her frustration, her uncharacteristically short fuse. 

By the time they had taken off their coats, not saying another word after their respective outbursts, her tears had dried.   
'Do you want some tea?' she asked Cloud neutrally. 

He nodded, trying to get her to meet his eyes. In a moment, she said silently, just give me a moment. 

Tea and peanut-butter-and-jelly crackers by the fireplace. 

Cloud had somehow gotten a hesitant fire to fuzz in the century-old hearth. She rubbed her eyes from time to time. 

Cloud watched her quietly but after a while he couldn't stand the silence between them.  
'Do you even know why I was saying I was restless?' he asked, sounding irritated.

'You want to leave,' she answered, feeling miserable. She sat beside him, on the couch, and the warmth he radiated was just incredible, made her want to creep up and cuddle with him, to feel warm and safe and secure and feel slender and pretty and feminine in his arms.

'You have no idea what I was talking about.' 

'Huh?' (Very eloquent, Tiff.) 

'Tifa, for a while now.. things have changed. I've changed. Stuff's gotten different. I don't think things should stay the way they were. I need to tell you what I-' 

Tifa interrupted him, furiously shaking her head. 'I don't care. I don't want you to go. Especially not because of stupid reasons like that. You have absolutely no good reasons to leave, besides which, I want you to stay.' she said. As she realized what she had said, how it might have sounded.. she decided she did not care. Perhaps she would get lucky. By pretending she didn't mind him leaving, she would be miserable. 

But, now, wouldn't she make him miserable? Then again, she wasn't forcing him to stay. He was an adult, he could choose for himself. Why would she be afraid she might influence his decision? Her mouth tightened. Shit. That was the whole problem. She wanted him to feel strongly enough for her to let her influence his decision.

He looked at her for a long time, that annoyed look back on his face making her nervous, even with the hint of amusement he was letting shine through, and she grew shaky because they were sitting so close by, and because she loved his eyes so. 

'Then I stay.' he said simply, with the tiniest smile relaxing onto his face. 

Her eyes were fastened on him, and she couldn't help her undoubtedly joyous expression. A grin flew to her face, and she ashamedly brushed away a few relieved tears. He would stay.

'Thank you.' she whispered at one moment, though unsure of who exactly it was directed at. Him? Her lucky stars? 

She let out a deep breath. 'I would have been unhappy if you left.' she confessed lightly. A moment later, she wondered how she might have dared to say those words out loud.

He had the strangest expression on his face as he rose, took in one hand both their empty teacups to bring to the kitchen, and then leaned over and touched a second, this time slight kiss to her mouth.

'You're so amazingly clueless sometimes,' he replied.

And then she was sitting alone on a couch. 

* 

It was an utterly silent day, not too long after we had last left our heroes.. 

Tifa sat in her bedroom, nestled in the great big windowsill she loved. It was pouring rain out, and she was briefly reminded of that second day that Cloud had come over, right after they had found each other again.   
Found each other, found each other.. she sighed out loud. The sound shriveled in the cold air around her. She imagined she could see her breath around her, but couldn't. Cloud whirled through her head. His face, his voice, his figure, his scent, his hands, his touch. He was so warm, he made her feel so warm. 

What was going on? What was happening to her? Who was she, anyways? Who had been that young girl, setting bravely out with a pack of friends to conquer a villain, save a world? She felt like it had been a movie, and she had watched it a million times, the way she always had watched her Disney movies when she had been a little girl. Millions of times. Tens of millions.   
That was how often she had thought back to each scene, each little bit from the great big movie called 'Tifa's life,' starring anonymous as Tifa Lockheart. Anonymous was her. She frowned and tried to look out the window. It was misted over, and she wiped a bit of it away. It made her hand feel cold, like it was dead, and she stopped. 

'PLEH,' she wrote instead. 

She regarded her four mirrored letters with a wry look. It didn't serve a perfect composition, those letters seeming too small when looked at in relation to the entire window. For form, Tifa wrote 'PLEH' a dozen more times, spread unevenly about the window. 

She stepped back to oversee it now, and rolled her eyes at herself. She jumped when Cloud rested his hand on her arm.

'It's just me,' he said quietly, and followed her when she walked back to the window. 

He looked at the window, and then at her, and then at the window again. His eyes had the strangest glow in the diffuse light that had dribbled through the clumped sky after the storm, light blue with incredible purple shadows reflecting shadow the way only eyes seem to be able to. 

She followed the eyes set in that ernest face, she saw his eyebrows making the slightest motions. He wiped away the 'PLEH' nearest to her, where she had curled up on the window sill again.   
She drew flowers and vines and spirals through the moisture, and watched with half an eye as he wrote beside her, letters mirrored as he always put them. 

'What are you doing?' she asked him. 

'Being more blunt, as you asked me to.' He answered. When he pulled away she gazed at his backwards words for sometime before they clicked into place. 

'AFIT UOY EVOL I' it said. 

She frowned, little gears in her head whirring and clicking, and something in her brain was telling her to feel very stupid right about now. 

'Oh for crying out loud,' she exclaimed at herself, and then started to cry. 

He neared her, unsure of what this meant. She stretched her arms and wrapped them around his waist, fumbling her breath into his chest. He rubbed her neck and her shoulders, not sure if this response meant kissing her would be okay.

Eventually he slipped onto the windowsill and she settled into his lap, where he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and kissed her temple, because that was the bit of her skin closest to his mouth.  
She let out a long, lingering hum and reached her arm to write something else, next to his declaration.

'YALED EHT ROF YRROS DNA OOT UOY EVOL I' it said. 

'I amaze myself,' she muttered, and sniffed in his scent as he laughed and laughed and nearly squished her in his hug. 

And don't pretend you can't finish the rest of the story from there.

* 


End file.
